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PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours
- foobarbecue 9y agoFewer hours. And yeah, I agree -- that's how I got mine done.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoPhD in Grammar Nazism?
- fonnesbeck 9y agoNo, just English.
- treehau5 9y agoIf this were actually a thing, you wouldn't need to capitalize the the G in grammar.
- kgwxd 9y agoWouldn't it be if it were the title of a Ph.D. program? I definitely forgot the dots though.
- treehau5 9y agoGood question actually, had to look it up. > Except for languages, such as English, French and Japanese, the names of academic disciplines, majors, minors, programs and courses of study are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized. Example: She majored in integrated supply management and German. https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/capitalization https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/capitalization
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI admit I logged in to HN to make the same grammar correction. Fewer/Less grammar errors bug me badly. I don't know why this particular grammatical error bugs me so, but every time I encounter it, I have an inner voice that yells 'fewer.' My family hates me for it.
- sideshowb 9y agoStannis has taught you well
- a_e_k 9y agoSame here. I think the reason it bugs me so much is because my mind views it as a type error: int fewer; float less; is how I tend to remember the distinction. (Fortunately in my family, my wife is the language nerd who first called me on my misuse many years ago. Now I notice it everywhere too. It's weirdly viral.)
- throwaway287391 9y agoI don't think that's quite right. For example, hours can be non-integer-valued (as in "three and a half hours"). The distinction is that "less" is used only for mass nouns (e.g., "less water").
- a_e_k 9y agoTrue, but as a heuristic I it is safe to say that if you'd use integer units to represent a quantity then you should use "fewer" rather than "less". That tends to capture the majority of cases for using "fewer". Admittedly, the discrete but non-integer-valued cases are a bit more nuanced. (And yes, I do realize that the actual definition is in terms of mass vs. countable nouns.)
- SubiculumCode 9y agoOr is it a difference only of being singular or plural?
- aub3bhat 9y agoThis is stupid advice with sole purpose of keeping students engaged in publishing incremental research. So that no one questions vanity metrics like H-index and the ridiculous condition of academic research. As a PhD student the real secret strategy is to ignore academia, work only on very high impact projects ( with potential of becoming startups or revolutionizing the field), intern with production teams (in core areas) at great companies. And enjoy lack of 9 to 5 scheduled life. The deep work in less hours is meaningless if the work itself is merely publishing "Minimum Publishable Units" couple of times every year. It's just fast track to mediocrity. Though I agree that not all environments are hospitable to risk taking. But then dropping out is a better deal.
- pathsjs 9y agoProduction teams at great companies seems to assume this is a Phd in something applied. Theorical Phds exists as well (e.g. pure maths)
- aub3bhat 9y agoHedge funds, prop trading etc. do hire from math heavy background. But I agree. My advice is only good for CS or similar (ECE, Data Science) PhD's.
- alphaalpha101 9y agoAnd if you don't think being an entrepreneur/startup founder/businessman is the pinnacle of human achievement? What then?
- aub3bhat 9y agoor revolutionizing the field
- falcolas 9y agoSeems to me like this applies nicely to more than just PhD's; it works well with programming as well. At least when you can fit that work in between all the meetings you are scheduled for in a day.
- ohdrat 9y agohm, time to eliminate the hacker news bookmark...
- snovv_crash 9y agoI'm torn between upvoting and downvoting this comment.
- raketenolli 9y agoI came back to HN (does it fall under #3 or #5?) just to remark something along these lines ...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Upvoter33 9y agoI think it's incredibly hard to give general advice about the Ph.D. process. Even within the same discipline, the work varies greatly from sub-discipline to sub-discipline, and from advisor to advisor.
- pgbovine 9y agoagreed! i cover this topic here: http://pgbovine.net/PG-Vlog-26-what-does-academia-mean.htm http://pgbovine.net/PG-Vlog-26-what-does-academia-mean.htm
- xaa 9y agoI have to thank you for your "Ph.D. Grind" memoir. There were many lessons in it, but the lesson I took from it, as I recall from reading it several years ago, was basically that you have to discard perfectionism to get anything done. I'm not sure if that was even an intended message, but that's what I took from it, and I thought back to it during the dark hours of dissertation writing when I was repeatedly thinking "this isn't good enough". I also remembered the lesson that one should be willing to be flexible in the sense that the dissertation doesn't have to be exactly (or at all) what you originally intended it to be.
- Void_ 9y agoJust try this for a week... 1. Remove Facebook/Instagram/Twitter from your phone. Using parental controls disable Safari. Remove your email too if you can. 2. Use SelfControl to block these websites for 24 hours at a time. So you only get to check these things once every day. After you've checked it, quickly block again. If 24 is too much, start with 8 or so. But always block again right after checking! SelfControl: https://selfcontrolapp.com/ https://selfcontrolapp.com/ -- Few more tips: - Pomodoro technique is nice (I built FocusList - focuslist.co) but in my experience it doesn't help if you keep thinking about how many more minutes you have to stay focused. Instead you have to forget about all that and just think about your task. - Keep a journal of sticking with this habit. I always print current month, put it up in my kitchen and I cross off days. I'm currently doing that for my diet, but it works for any habit you wanna build. - If you can't motivate yourself, reading a book like "Deep Work" will give you an initial push. - Use headphones. This is individual, but speaking for me, they just gave me this feeling of immersion and it just helps me get into the zone. Get a nice pair with noise cancelling, or with those foam tips (if it's comfy), it will make you feel like you entered a different world.
- SimplyUnknown 9y ago> Keep a journal of sticking with this habit. I always print current month, put it up in my kitchen and I cross off days. I'm currently doing that for my diet, but it works for any habit you wanna build. You mean like a calendar? The "string of unbroken crosses technique"? Or do you mean something else?
- Void_ 9y agoWell, string is nice, but sometimes you just need a cheat day. I don't try to keep an unbroken string, instead I try to cross off as many days in a month as I can. The point is that you should create a meta-habit of checking your habits. A daily reminder.
- n1000 9y agoJust got myself a nice pair of noise-cancelling headphones last week. I had some extremely productive hours like I've hardly known before.
- albertTJames 9y agoI have tried most productivity hacks. In the end what worked best is the Pomodoro 25/5.
- fazkan 9y agoHow has it worked for you I am interested. It has worked for me too, and I too have tried a lot of things. The reason it has worked for me is because I set the bar very low. Like one pomodoro on a specific task and then I usually end up spending more time...
- albertTJames 9y agoI believe it helps because it a) Is simple b) Works for any tasks. c) Allows for short burst of activity during which it is easy to refrain from reading random stuff, mails, or explore tangential ideas. Easy because you know you will have 5 minutes to check it out if necessary after your burst. d) Helps for moving around, go fill a glass of water, look at your surroundings etc. e) Probably correlates well with average human attention span
- tajd 9y agoSame here, that and keeping a written record of the tasks I'm specifically working on means I have a good track of what I've done and what I need to do next. I must look pretty special with the amount of notes I take, but it's literally the only way I keep myself honest.
- frozenport 9y agoThis is complete bullshit. From personal experience, one needs to stay at the experimental setup until you have publishable data. For example, I had part of an experiment die when the oxygen tank ran out, rushed back to the lab at 3:00 AM, changed the acquisition mode. I took the final picture and published in a high impact Nature family journal. My less productive colleges would have called the experiment a failure, and stayed home.
- bloaf 9y agoIt depends on your field. There are some experiments you can't just walk away from, for safety reasons. You can't just "focus" and make your chemical reaction go faster.
- graeham 9y agoAgreed. A large amount of time also goes into things like making figures, which is mostly time-consuming grunt work. I think the key is differentiating between creative work (which is better to be done deep with fewer hours) and grunt work which is almost purely time. Both are needed for a sucessful PhD - few are good at both and it is hard to switch between the two.
- j7ake 9y agoI'm a little confused, has this person contributed to science in any significant way ? If not why should we listen to this person and ignore scientists who have actually achieved success in their field ?
- BeetleB 9y ago>I'm a little confused, has this person contributed to science in any significant way ? If not why should we listen to this person and ignore scientists who have actually achieved success in their field ? It's a fair question. But be warned: You're not going to get a much less diverse set of answers from them, though. I would suggest also listening to scientists who established themselves 30+ years ago. You'll likely hear a different story compared to the current crop. In the 00's, some of my fellow graduate students did more work for their PhD than many faculty members I know did to get tenure in the 80's and early 90's. The high level of work demanded today is mostly due to inbreeding attitudes in academia. It's entirely an internal problem.
- throwawayaway12 9y agoI largely agree with this, but in some fields I also think it is an over supply of PhD problem as well.
- altotrees 9y agoThe oversupply problem is one that doesn't seem to be going away ay time soon, especially in the pure sciences. From my anecdotal evidence, it seems to be harder and harder to get into academia or cross into industry each year. I have multiple bio and chemistry PhD friends who have been either stuck in limbo at a postdoc position or who have left the field in frustration. I wonder if it will correct over time, or if the glut or PhD's will continue to grow.
- sage76 9y agoIs it the same in CS as far as industry positions are concerned?
- e19293001 9y agoI do walking for 30 minutes at the middle of the day while thinking about the task or problem that I'm facing during that time. It just always amaze me that good ideas pop up in my mind when I walk. For those who are stressed and overwhelmed, I would advise to take a walk. And also for those who want to be creative, take a walk. It's a productivity hack.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- throwaway287391 9y ago> #6 Give yourself a break This is the most important bit in my experience. I had a pretty successful PhD and I loved my time as a PhD student. I'd have days or even weeks when I just didn't feel particularly motivated, and when that happened, I didn't sit at my desk twiddling my thumbs, I took the day off. Maybe read some papers, but almost never forced myself to do hands-on work if I wasn't feeling it. Having an advisor that grants you this kind of flexibility, as well as the flexibility to let you take on projects that make you feel motivated, is pretty important for a successful and non-torturous PhD, IMHO. (Meanwhile I know of other advisors whose students would come into the lab 7 days a week and try to sell their work-life balance by telling the story of this one time when one guy the afternoon off on a Friday to go skiing. It's bizarre to me that some advisors think that kind of whip-cracking is the right way to make creative endeavors successful.)
- naturalgradient 9y agoAs a current PhD student in a highly competitive program, I wish I could say this is reasonable advice, but it's wishful thinking in the hyper-competitive environment at top tier universities (where the goal of a PhD student would be to graduate as faculty material). There is just no way around grinding out the experiments. You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate again and again until you figure it out. Deep work is good and nice for the theoretical parts, but all the academic superstars/upcomers I know work super long AND super hard to make conference deadlines all the time. Of course, if you just want to graduate without stressing all that much or much ambition, this might work.
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- otakucode 9y ago>You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate again and again until you figure it out. Or instead of iterating 5 times, you take your time and do it right on the 2nd attempt, figuring it out in 1/3 of the time. Hurrying only leads to mistakes. It makes no more sense than attempting to continue working when you really need to go to the bathroom. You are are a human being and have biological limitations. Ignoring them is of no benefit and usually significant detriment.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoYou can say that but sometimes there is just no way to get it right without trying stuff that doesn't work, improving on that, and throwing the old stuff away. You can't plan ahead and take your time to do things the right way because you don't know what the right way is. Iterating quickly is a way to work through those approaches quickly, and throwing away bad approaches is better than refining the wrong one. John Carmack: Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.
- cfusting 9y ago"deep work"meaning concentrate. Breaks, of course. Innovation does not happen at the grind. Funny how concentration has gone out of fashion.
- simonbarker87 9y agoThe biggest thing I noticed when starting my PhD was all the first and second years derping around not doing much, all the third years panicking and "just getting going" and all the 4th and 5th years really grinding. So, I inverted that and worked my ass off like I was still an undergrad in the first 18 months, toned it down for the next year and submitted my thesis at 2 years 10 months (the earliest my university would allow a submission) and was viva'd and passed 2 months later with minor corrections. PhDs taking forever is generally a lack of initial work by the student rather than any external factors. Too many students let their supervisors fob them off rather than getting in their office when needed and forcing their projects forward. Also, selecting a sensible area with a high likelihood of novelty helps, I worked on energy harvesting for hostile environments (high temp photovoltaics, piezo etc at 300degC) which was a new area for the group and my supervisor, and published 6 papers as basically nobody else was working in the field. Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors).
- chrisseaton 9y agoI definitely think the UK system for PhDs is more focused and therefore more productive. On day one of my PhD my advisor showed me to my desk and told me to start researching what I wanted to research. I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. And many US students seem to spend hours teaching.
- tnecniv 9y ago> I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. This varies a lot by program in the US. Some schools want you to take 10 classes in the first two years. You can, of course, do research but your mind will be elsewhere. Others don't care as long as you pass your quals and take the required number of courses by the end of your PhD.
- closed 9y agoIt seems like early PhD work often involves working at a critical piece that's often overlooked: learning the social landscape of academics (and maybe figuring out what kind of academic they want to be).
- otakucode 9y agoEssentially every single aspect of our cultures understanding about how to accomplish things and do work is a direct outgrowth of assembly-line manufacturing. Mental work is fundamentally different. But we continue to treat mental work as if its the same thing as mindless physical rote repetition. Humans aren't capable of extended periods of mental exertion. 40 hours of work a week was fine when moving sheet metal into a press. For mental work, it's counter-productive and borders on the cruel. It's certainly harmful to every effort that pursues it. But habits die hard, and the management class is more addicted to the manufacturing-driven mindset than junkies are to heroin, so it'll take awhile to change.
- munin 9y ago> Humans aren't capable of extended periods of mental exertion The humans on my thesis committee are definitely capable of extended periods of mental exertion. I don't know if it's something you're only born with or if it's something you can train but I bet I'll find out in a few years.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoHow would you know? It looks difficult, maybe even impossible to measure academic productivity.
- munin 9y agoWell, we could use a crude metric which is, how much of the day do you spend doing intellectual work? Right now, my advisor spends about ten or twelve hours. And it is pretty deep intellectual work, most of it is paper reading or discussion, via e-mail or in person meetings. Between watching when/how they reply to e-mail, make check-ins, their calendar, and talking to other collaborators and other students, they genuinely seem to fill 12 hours a day with work, six days a week, and have for the last fifteen years. We can quickly get into some no-true-Scotsman territory here by asking "well if they're so smart how many Nobel/Field/Turing awards do they have" or something, but that's not the original question. The original question was, how much can you work at a high level a day? I have a measurement for both the ceiling and the floor and the ceiling seems high.
- cap3 9y agoFewer
- a3_nm 9y agoThe problem with saying "less hours" is that the optimal numbers of hours of effort varies a lot depending on your current productivity. If you can't manage to focus on something despite persistent effort, yes it's much better to stop and have fun instead. It makes no sense to have "long hours" as a goal even if you're not sure of what you are going to try to accomplish during that time. On the other hand, when you are motivated, or making progress on something, or working towards a deadline, then it may be very productive to keep going for many hours. I don't have statistics, but an important part of my PhD output (both research and writing) was done between 11 PM and 3 AM, on weekends, etc. (By the way, I disagree with the advice of going to the lab early in the morning -- personally I worked better from home late at night. But it depends on how you work and whether you can do the work from home or not.) Importantly, you should be in a flow mode, so actually these hours don't feel "long". The main productivity lesson I got from my PhD is this: either work productively, or relax wholeheartedly. Aka: "Do, or do not; there is no try." :) It's terrible to try to work on something and not succeed -- it's unproductive, unpleasant, it does not put you in a better mood like real fun does, and it makes you completely disgusted with the task so it will be even harder to work on it next time. You have to learn when to keep on working, and when to stop because you won't be productive working longer. (You get better at this productivity prediction with experience.) And you should be fine with stopping very early, maybe skipping the rest of the day if it turns out you're not in the mood; but you should also be fine with stopping late and working crazy hours when inspiration comes.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoI’ve found the same thing at my job as a software developer, as well as on my hobby projects—including a programming language, which is very like Ph.D. territory. Sometimes the time and code flow easily, sometimes not; forcing myself to work when I’m not in a good state of mind to be productive is actively harmful to my holistic productivity.
- alphaalpha101 9y ago>The worst PhD productivity advice is to work long hours. This advice is shared by successful people in Academia, so it should be good advice, shouldn’t it? Is it though? Because I've never heard this ever. I've heard over and over again to avoid working long hours. It always annoys me when articles start off on premises like these that I just don't think are true.